Along familiar streets such as Nguyen Ai Quoc, Pham Van Thuan, Huynh Van Nghe, Tran Cong An, and especially the park along Nguyen Van Tri street where I often walk alone every afternoon, the purple flowers compete to show off their colors. This flower is not as noisy as the red phoenix flower, not as proud as the velvet rose, and not as colorful as the hydrangea. The purple flowers have a gentle, tender beauty like a girl who knows how to hide her feelings deep in her eyes, only those who are truly sensitive can recognize it.
I love purple. The color purple is loyal, the color purple is dreamy. So every time the season of the Lagerstroemia comes, my heart flutters. Sometimes just a small cluster of flowers reaching out from an old wall makes me stop for a long time, take a picture and cherish it as if I have just held a piece of the sky of youth in my hands.
This afternoon, I wandered alone on the street. The ancient Lagerstroemia trees spread their canopies, shading a long stretch of the road. The wind blew from the Dong Nai River, fluttering the white ao dai of a group of female students who had just finished school. I seemed to see myself years ago, also in white, also pressing the Lagerstroemia petals into my notebook, once hastily writing someone’s name on tearful May afternoons.
The familiar coffee shop at the corner of Vo Thi Sau Street was sparsely populated today. I ordered a glass of iced coffee and sat by the window looking out at the trees. The purple of the Lagerstroemia flowers reflected in my eyes, slowing my heart. I opened my old notebook, the Lagerstroemia petals that had been carefully pressed in twelfth grade were still intact. The petals had dried and turned a light purple, but the words at the bottom were still clear: “Returning the age of seventeen in May with Lagerstroemia flowers.”
That name is no longer with me, but the memories of the first flower seasons are still vivid as if it were yesterday. I remember the sunny afternoons, when my friends rode their bikes home from school, passing by the purple road covered with fallen flowers. Some of them burst out laughing when flowers fell on their heads, while others gathered the fallen petals into their bicycle baskets, saying they were saving them for love letters. During that school age, there was nothing but the first emotions and a sky full of purple flowers.
I once heard people say that the Lagerstroemia is the flower of unfulfilled love. Perhaps because it blooms and falls too quickly, is heartbreakingly beautiful and then fades quickly. But perhaps that is also why the Lagerstroemia makes people cherish and preserve it. Like me, every time the flowers bloom, I linger to find a bit of the past in the gentle purple color.
The other day, I wandered along Nguyen Ai Quoc Street and stopped by an old bookstore. Inside, the owner was diligently dusting off books that had turned yellow with time. We talked for a while, and he told me that before 1975, this place used to be a famous bookstore, where Bien Hoa boys and girls would meet to buy books and find poems. There was a student who gave his girlfriend a notebook every year during the season of blooming purple flowers with a romantic dedication, and now he still occasionally comes back to look for old books and reminisce about the past. I suddenly realized that Bien Hoa was once so romantic, not only with factories, workshops and hurried people…
Walking across the Ghenh bridge, looking down at the winding river, I saw a row of purple Lagerstroemia trees on the other side of the bank blooming all over the sky. Under the tree, a couple was taking wedding photos. The bride smiled brightly, her hand gently stroking the petals as if stroking a gentle memory. Bien Hoa is in love, is living, and is becoming a place where the Lagerstroemia flowers are beautiful every year, and reminiscent of the same.
Someone once told me: “If you were a flower, you would definitely be a Lagerstroemia, quiet yet captivating, gentle yet unforgettable.” I don’t know if that was a flirtation or a farewell, but since then, every Lagerstroemia season, I wandered around looking for my shadow in that purple sky - where I used to love, dream, and write my diary with the tiny petals falling on my student’s shoulders.
These early days of May, Bien Hoa is so different. Not because the city changes every day, but because it is wearing a dreamy purple coat that no other city has. Every tree, every sidewalk, every small alley… holds a memorable footprint in me. And the Lagerstroemia is like an old friend, always returning at the exact moment when I need to be silent, need to reminisce.
If anyone ever thought Bien Hoa was just a place to come and then leave, please try to visit again during the season of purple flowers. Standing under the silently falling purple flowers, you will feel your heart calm down, feel time slow down, and who knows, maybe the memories of the time in white shirts will come flooding back.
Even if tomorrow the streets will have many new turns, the roads that were once dyed purple with youthful memories may change to another color; even if I go many more miles, cross many splendid or flashy cities, in my mind Bien Hoa will always be the purple sky of that year's purple flower season. It will still be Nguyen Van Tri Park with the rows of trees casting shadows on the road I used to quietly walk, it will still be the small corner next to the old coffee shop with someone's eyes that once looked at me for a long time but did not dare to speak.
Bien Hoa to me is as beautiful as my first love. Gentle but passionate. Not noisy but unforgettable. The seasons of purple flowers will pass, time will take everything away, but that purple color - the purple color of first love, of a dreamy youth will remain forever, intact in my heart.
Essays by Ngo Huong
Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/dong-nai-cuoi-tuan/202505/mua-hoa-bang-lang-nhung-ngay-tim-mong-mo-38e2f1c/
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